The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
On Tuesday, the country’s academia was privileged to dialogue with the Government and captains of industry on how institutions of higher learning could negotiate strategic synergies aimed at endorsing national development.
This historic occasion serenades Zimbabwe’s embrace of the current political transition and country’s prospects for a massive political and economic turnaround under the leadership of President Emmerson Mnangagwa following his recent inauguration.
President Mnangagwa’s meeting with principals of higher education, industry and the public service sector forms the basis of the long term national roadmap for a meticulous framework for the production of knowledge which will revive the facet of public administration.
This broad based approach to knowledge creation must productively reorganise the nation’s extractive and manufacturing sector as well as the services sector.
As one reflects on the need for the renewal of the country’s issues of public governance, it is hard to ignore the seminal contributions of the Professor Jonathan Moyo — beyond his failure as a politician.
In his books, The Politics of the National Purse and another publication, The Politics of Public Administration in Africa he submits that the key challenges facing post-colonial Governance includes inept human capital in promoting service delivery competence and policy implementation delinquencies.
The two challenges pointed out in relation to our reasons for underdevelopment points out to the absence of a progressive methodology in the teaching of disciplines which are central in promoting national development.
It is my hope that tertiary institutions take heed to the Chancellor of all universities’ recommendation on the need for their curriculum readjustments to promote knowledge production which is in synch with national economic growth as well as playing their part in promoting a wider access to tertiary education. That is a right for every Zimbabwean deserving an opportunity to be a university student.
On the other hand, I was particularly impressed that this important national event held at the HICC on Tuesday was presided over by a decorated revolutionary scholar, Professor Ngwabi Bhebe.
Apart from his massive eloquence and his rarely matched command of words and his sense of presence whenever he is on the podium; Ngwabi deserved to chair that forum considering his far-reaching credentials as a decolonial tertiary institution builder. Prof Ngwabi Bhebe is one of nationalist historian and a giant pan-Africanist academic.
Categorically, he belongs to the class of eminent historians like the late Dr Stan Mudenge, Dr Elleck Kufakunesu Mashingaidze and Dr Hoyini Bhila; as well as white historians like Prof Terence Ranger and David N. Beach.
Prof Bhebe is the man who nursed the Midlands State University from its infancy in the early millennium right up to his retirement as the institution’s founding Vice-Chancellor in 2016.
On his retirement, he was appointed as Professor Emeritus in the university’s Department of History as a way of recognising his legendary professional track record as a distinguished academic.
In a forum discussing production of knowledge which is relevant to unlocking the vistas of economic development Prof Bhebe was a befitting middle point of that dialogue. It was in his tenure and through his acumen that the Midlands State University established the country’s largest faculty of commerce studies.
In his tenure as the Vice-Chancellor of the only state university in Midlands, Zimbabwe witnessed the establishment of the biggest and specialised campus for business studies.
This institute of business studies has been exceptional in many ways, but most importantly, it has produced thousands of the country’s new breed of bankers, economists, accountants and business administrators.
Therefore, it was no accident that Prof Ngwabi was the Director of Ceremonies at this esteemed forum discussing the state of our knowledge banks and their relevance in framing the course of national development.
Through his leadership the Midlands State University has been an arsenal of social science knowledge production.
Over the past years, MSU has produced en masse experts in the area of media and society studies, political science, communication, music, film and Local Governance studies.
Through his innovation, Prof Bhebe has demonstrated that academic excellence is best achieved when a university is led by a Vice-Chancellor who is not conservative.
The culture of obscurantism in most of our universities is the main cause of stagnation in terms of curriculum development. It is this sense of university administrative innovation which has made MSU to have one of the country’s arguably best faculty of law.
The lack of this character uniquely possessed by MSU is the reason why most universities are failing to produce graduates who significantly contribute to the body of knowledge through research.
Sadly, the conservative university prides itself in innovations which have no place in the ever-changing needs of national economic development.
While it is plausible to acknowledge the foundational excellence of some of our institutions of higher learning, it is also key to move away from basking in institutional memories washed away by the birth of new actors in the game of knowledge production.
This is what makes Prof Bhebe an outstanding university administrator having led a university which is now in its baby steps to being a continental university of choice.
The Midlands State University’s abhor of being content with its milestone successes is the reason why it has spread out its faculties to many parts of the country –with at least one campus in almost every province.
Through its expansionist model, MSU now has a campus in Manicaland specifically established to focus on engineering and geology.
Then one wonders why this has not been the case with country’s oldest university?
In preserving Ngwabi Bhebe’s legacy, the Midland State University must at least strive to adopt the University of South-Africa (Unisa) model and roll-out correspondence courses accessible for a wider African uptake.
Already, Prof Bhebe set the standard in this regard, MSU has students coming from as far as South Sudan, Angola, Namibia and a running humanities faculty in Swaziland.
The call for MSU to adopt a wide continental reach in distributing the teaching of the disciplines offered by the institution should be a leaf drawn from Prof Bhebe’s erstwhile service to many campuses across the continent as a lecturer.
At some point he was a lecturer in Sierra Leone before moving to the University of Lesotho.
Thereafter, he came back home to teach at the University of Zimbabwe. There he produced a crop of firebrand historians like Prof Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Dr Terence Mashingaidze, Dr James Muzondidya, Dr Ishmael Mazambani and Dr Gerald Chikozho Mazarire.
Apart from his illustrious contribution as a university administrator par-excellent, Prof Bhebe has played a crucial role in challenging the monopoly of white supremacy historiography.
In this regard, Prof Bhebe wrote notable biographies of the precursors of anti-colonial resistance like Kings Mzilikazi KaMatshobana Khumalo and Lobengula KaMzilikazi Khumalo. He also wrote biographies of the Second Chimurenga icons namely Benjamin Burombo, and Simon Vengayi Muzenda.
Prof Bhebe’s other academic publications include, Zapu and Zanu Guerrilla Warfare, Christianity and Traditional Religion in West Zimbabwe, Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War — a publication he worked on with Terence Ranger.
He also produced a series which probed the subject of human rights and democracy between 2001 and 2003 titled, The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights in Zimbabwe.
Bhebe’s loyalty to anti-colonial intellectual principles is one aspect which makes him a unique scholar.
Through his writing, he has defended the nationalist revolutionary path while some have continued to borrow narratives from colonial stereotypes of our country’s political culture.
Just like some of his contemporaries, in the beginning of the millennium Bhebe would have choose the fashionable anti-establishment academic route.
However, he chose consistency over temporary fame. One can argue that this was largely because Prof Bhebe was directly involved in the Second Chimurenga.
Therefore, he was obliged by his personal relationship with the liberation struggle to appreciate the Third-Chimurenga and complement its tenets as a founding Vice-Chancellor of a state university.
Earlier on in the article, I made reference to Professor Jonathan Moyo’s contribution to the body of knowledge, at the same time my conscience questions his sincerity to the issues he has posited for intellectual debate.
This is because over the years he has proved to be a political (ideological) flip-flopper. However, history will judge him in his own right. That is the fate of every scholar, just the fate of a double agent is death.
Today, the pace of Africa’s intellectual renaissance has left behind some great scholarly works in annals of history.
Some names which were great yesterday have been long crushed by the emerging consciousness of reading the truth through liberated eyes.
In this new experience of reflecting the long journey to our quest for self-discovery we will have the real African revolutionaries standing. Prof Sam Moyo is one of these, let alone Vimbai Gukwe Chivaura is forever a hero, unequivocally, Ngwabi is a grand master.
Long live my Vice Chancellor!
-Richard Mahomva is an independent researcher and a literature aficionado interested in architecture of governance in Africa and political theory.
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